VICTIMS' ADVOCATES TARGET BENETTON, CALL FOR BOYCOTT

Crime victims' advocates in Texas and New York are calling for a boycott of fashion giant Benetton to protest its new advertising campaign, which sympathetically portrays Death Row inmates.

The Italian company and its products, including a line of clothing carried by Sears, are being targeted in Texas by Justice for All, and beyond by the New York group Center for the Community Interest.

"We are going to organize a boycott of Benetton products and just ask people upfront not to buy Benetton products," said Dianne Clements, president of Justice for All. "Benetton is in bed with killers, and Sears is in bed with Benetton."

At issue is a $20 million ad campaign, to be carried on billboards and in major magazines, titled "We on Death Row." It features pictures of and interviews with more than two dozen condemned killers. None is from Texas because prison officials would not let the company interview and photograph inmates.

Repeated attempts to reach a spokesman at Benneton U.S. headquarters in New York were unsuccessful.

In a news release announcing the campaign, Benetton said the ads are aimed at "giving back a human face to the prisoners on death row."

Benetton advertisements have drawn protests in the past for graphically highlighting social issues such as AIDS, war and starvation.

"With this new initiative," the news release states, "Benetton has once again chosen to look reality in the face by tackling a social issue."

Sears, however, apparently has a different reality in mind.

"We have already made our position pretty clear that we're not enamored with the Benetton advertising and, in fact, Sears is in discussions with Benetton right now about that issue," company spokesman Tom Nicholson said Tuesday. "It's certainly not the type of advertising we would believe would be appropriate."

Nicholson said the Benetton fashion line, introduced at Sears last summer, has been "well received by most of our customers." However, removing the merchandise is "on the table" in Sears' discussions with Benetton, he said.

Clements said activists are organizing a protest of a Sears outlet in Houston, and the one Benetton clothing store in Texas, in Houston's Galleria. She said the protest is tentatively scheduled for early February.

Joe Diamond, a spokesman for the New York-based Center for the Community Interest, a national crime victims group, emphasized that the group was not calling for a boycott of Sears outright -- only Benetton products.

According to pro-death penalty groups, the 26 prisoners featured in the ads are responsible for the deaths of 37 people.

What upset the victim advocates most is that the details of the crimes they committed are not mentioned in the ads. Instead, the inmates are asked about their hopes and dreams, their upbringing and their opinions on life.

Jeremy Sheets, for example, was asked in the Benetton interview what he thinks is wrong with the world today.

"I think a big problem, with America at least, is that the parents aren't spending enough time with their kids," he said. "When I was a kid my dad was always home when I got home from school."

The ad did not mention that Sheets is awaiting execution for the rape and murder of Kenyatta Bush, 17, of Nebraska. According to the taped confession of an accomplice, Adam Barnett, the pair killed the young honor student because she was black. Barnett killed himself in jail after implicating Sheets, who denied involvement in the crime.

Another condemned prisoner, Jerome Mallett, was asked if he had been unlucky. He said he had been and recalled being "at a friend's house in Fort Worth and a guy threw some dynamite in the house and I got all burnt up."

Mallett landed on Missouri's Death Row after a jury convicted him of killing a state trooper who, during a traffic stop, discovered that Mallett was wanted in Dallas and a parole violation and on an armed robbery charge.

Speedy Rice, a professor at Gonzaga Law School in Spokane, Wash., and a member of the National Association of Criminal Defense Attorneys, helped arrange the Death Row interviews for Benetton. He said the interviews were granted only after the company agreed not to get into "issues of the crime, guilt or innocence," which would have interfered with the attorney-client relationship.

He said the reaction from crime victims groups "proves to us the very reason why this was necessary. We in this country don't want to think about people on Death Row as human beings."

Rice said one of the most difficult tasks was finding states that would allow the interviews. Texas wasn't interested, said Larry Todd, a spokesman for the Texas Department of Criminal Justice.

"We've had others that wanted to do Death Row calendars, have an inmate of the month. We don't do that sort of thing," he said. "We take the prison business very seriously. We're not into the Hollywood approach to communications."